Parameter-free continuous drift–diffusion models of amorphous organic semiconductors

Abstract

Continuous drift–diffusion models are routinely used to optimize organic semiconducting devices. Material properties are incorporated into these models via dependencies of diffusion constants, mobilities, and injection barriers on temperature, charge density, and external field. The respective expressions are often provided by the generic Gaussian disorder models, parametrized on experimental data. We show that this approach is limited by the fixed range of applicability of analytic expressions as well as approximations inherent to lattice models. To overcome these limitations we propose a scheme which first tabulates simulation results performed on small-scale off-lattice models, corrects for finite size effects, and then uses the tabulated mobility values to solve the drift–diffusion equations. The scheme is tested on DPBIC, a state of the art hole conductor for organic light emitting diodes. We find a good agreement between simulated and experimentally measured current–voltage characteristics for different film thicknesses and temperatures.